Biology

To create a ghoul, feed vampire blood to a corpse. Freshness of the brain determines intelligence. The donating vampire commands the ghoul, although older ghouls become increasingly independent, same as vampires.

Ghouls are expensive to maintain, requiring large quantities of meat (quality irrelevant) unless magically preserved. Thus they are short-lived weapons of mass destruction. Vampires rely on them as shock troops, draining the fallen and then raising them to fight again.

When first raised, they are little more than ravening beasts. Additional vampire blood can restore a measure of calm and reason. Ghouls retain only long-term memories and skills, if any. A ghoul has no memory of the events leading up to his death.

Ghouls are not vengeful or sentimental about their prior lives. Although some are capable of moderately complex thought when well-fed, they are invariably gluttonous and focused on acquiring meat.

This renders all but a few unsuitable for long-term or responsible positions. These serve as sergeants and bodyguards in wealthy vampire houses. They understand that future meals depend on obedience. A team of armored ghouls can hold a chokepoint indefinitely until they run out of meat.

The ideal use of a ghoul outbreak is to eliminate all ground-based fauna in an area. A few vampires working together can raise dozens of ghouls from an unhallowed cemetery in a single night. Fortunately, vampires are disinclined to do this, since it eliminates their source of blood.

Of course, if a polity completely eradicates vampires from its borders, then there is be no reason to forbear. Therefore most living races either tolerate vampires or require priests of Zin to oversee cemetery defenses.

Lore: Assassin of the Midnight Guild

The Black Forest gives way to contested woodlands and eventually the great agricultural empires of the settled surface races, which abut the Tauren steppes. The woodland tribes pay a blood tithe to remain unmolested by the Black Flight, and permit the Flight's emissaries safe passage. From there vampire infiltrators strike deep into settled lands, or the "heartlands", as the vampires irreverently call the great farmlands from which the Blood Council harvests the majority of its blood.

Vampires are naturally master assassins, and these infiltrators control many assassin's guilds in the heartlands. Power and corruption will always need capable hands to do their violence, whether those hands are cold or warm. The flow of blood winging back to the Ancients ruling the Black Forest guarantees the guilds' reliable support for the powers that be. In the territory of the Midnight Guilds, unsanctioned banditry is a rare and brief career, to say nothing of open political rebellion.

Of course, vampires always require retainers unfazed by holy sunlight. That's where your story begins. An unwanted birth in an uncaring city, you were "donated" to the Church of Kiku, which is always willing to pay a few coppers to snuff out even the sorriest life. Instead of being drowned, however, you were raised in the cult's orphanage, your place endowed by the Midnight Guild.

Your training progressed from street urchin to dayblade, but evidently you failed your first assignment, since here you are, dead and hungry. You do remember your way around a knife, and your marksmanship lessons with the exotic blowgun. The precious quiver of needles, not to mention the enchanted dagger, represent to you an unfathomable wealth.

The constant hunger of your new unlife is difficult to ignore, but the Master's instructions are burned into your brain. Just like how those drops of his blood seared their way down your throat.

Terence the Incautious lived up to his name, robbing the wrong merchant's wagon. With so little crime, guards are superfluities often omitted. Dependable guild followup ensures crime doesn't pay. However, Terence and his booty seem to have simply disappeared into the foothills, frustrating experienced trackers. Your instructions are to kill everything and flush him out.

This is what you would've done anyway. You were tearing after a rat, claws outstretched, when you found yourself about to run smack into a rock wall! Grimacing and bracing your arms, you unexpectedly run straight through the illusory wall, spilling onto the floor of the Dungeon antechamber.

You leapt to your feet and roared, drawing your dagger and whirling about. Nothing happened, and gradually your growls subsided over the next ten minutes. You felt strangely calm in the cool subterranean chamber. The stress of hours in the sunlight melted away, and your posture straightened.

Outside, the sun was still shining. You sneered at the tasteless greenery and turned your back to it.

The rat! Where did it go? With a jerk you begin loping forward, snarling "Terence…"

Aptitudes

GhAs physical apts are flat and similar to Human, making it clear that Ghoul is a dead Human. Most skills have a -1 relative to Human. Magic gets some relative -2s. Positive exceptions are Fighting at +1 apt, Stealth 2, and Earth and Ice 1. Poison, Necromancy and Invocations are neutral.

Generally negative magic apts makes it clear that Ghoul isn't supposed to focus in either elemental school. Rather, those positive apts are there to support the only school he's passable at: Necromancy.

Elemental schools, including both Earth and Ice, have few single-school spells. Necromancy, by contrast, is much more focused. Moreover, Necromancy has broad utility, since it is intended to be an omni-tool to compensate for undead inability to worship the powerful Good Gods. Undead mostly ignore Necromancy miscast effects, which balances inability to cast Necromutation, Death's Door, Borgnjor's Revivification, and Sublimation of Blood.

+1 Earth and Ice make it easy for GhAs to achieve acceptable spellpower on Simulacrum and BVC. What else would they be for? Ozocubu's Refrigeration is unlikely, given it turns undead allies hostile. At least Ghoul can eat chunks during -Potion. Ozocubu's Armor is a bad deal for high-Strength Ghoul. -2 Conjurations eliminates the projectiles. -1 Transmutations and inability to cast most Transmutation renders Earth/Tmut spells undesirable. Thus the designer's intent is clear: a high aptitude to fulfill a secondary role cheaply.

The same is true of GhAs +2 Stealth. He's not a stabber and will wear heavy armor, but he does start lightly armored. Later he may wear Shadow Dragon Armor, helping him to explore aggressively while still planning engagements to account for allies and shy regen.

Poison is only there for Olgreb's Toxic Radiance, which suits GhAs' hard-charging style.

Attributes

Background impact

Ghoul's extremely lopsided attributes have a heavy influence on his background selection, which is unusual.

wiki> Ghouls have a base Strength of 11, Intelligence of 3 and Dexterity of 4 … +1 strength every 5th level.

The sum of Ghoul base stats is 18, 6 less than a Human's 24. Ghoul bonus stat growth is also slower – every 5th level rather than every 4th.

Ghoul base Int and Dex are critically low. This puts Ghoul in danger of Stat Zero, and wastes solid Dex aptitudes.

Int is a lost case. Ghoul has -1 base magic points and largely -2 magical apts. Ghoul can cast some Necromancy later, which synergizes with +1 Ice and Earth. Ghoul's undead flesh resists Necromancy miscasts.

The problem with meleeist backgrounds is that they raise Strength, ignoring Int and Dex. The problem with non-meleeist backgrounds is that Ghoul is naturally a meleeist. Assassin is an acceptable compromise, providing a solid starting weapon and leveraging Ghoul's strong Stealth +2. Assassin also adds +3 Int, preventing Stat Zero from a blind Degen quaff. Hunter is a good fit for similar reasons, but Ghoul favors Assassin to solve his kiting problem. Eating chunks while the foe's poison ticks is a big HP delta.

Abyssal Knight is another decent option. However, it doesn't solve shy regen, instead worsening it by extending fights with Bend Space. Ghoul is a meleeist who wants to close, not to stay at range. Yred fits better than Lugonu.

Assassin gives Ghoul Curare as a way to escape a 10-speed adjacent foe when Ghoul has lost the melee fight. Curare also leverages Ghoul's stealth, often giving him a free debilitating shot at sleeping extremely dangerous threats.

Free points

GhAs starts with Str 14, Int 6, Dex 10.

He gets +1 Str / 5 levels, for +5 total, bringing him to Str 19. Max enc is 23.

9 free points remain. Put at most 4 into Str to reach max Enc.

Pick Dex at first, to synergize with +2 Stealth and land needles. Then pick Str once heavier armor is available.

That leaves 3-4 points for Int, to cast Necromancy and some low-level utility spells, such as Song of Slaying and Blink.

Background: Assassin

Obviously essential Ghoul isn't a book background. On top of having a retarded base intelligence of 3, he has -1 base magic points.

Ghoul's problem is shy regen, which interferes with kiting, a primary DCSS tactic.

GhAs mitigates this weakness in two ways. Firstly, stealth helps prevent or lose pursuit. Second, poison kiting with the blowgun makes kiting net HP favorable again. It also provides quick kills in the early game, facilitating Ghoul's chunks snowball.

Stats are also a big reason to choose Assassin, as Ghoul's innate stats are dangerously unbalanced.

God: Yred -> Kiku

Why worship Yred when one can simply cast Animate Dead oneself?

Because GhAs is too stupid to cast Animate Dead for a long time, or even Animate Skeleton, given the armor he likes to wear, and the stats he will initially increase. Yred makes good use of his MP bar, and doesn't cost Invo training until Drain Life.

Yred counters natural holiness foes that leave corpses. Early low-corpse branches are Slime, Crypt, Vestibule and Abyss. GhAs is ill-suited to low-corpse branches anyway, and happy to defer them while worshiping Yred first. He can return to them later with Kiku, who delivers.

GhAs suffers no additional conduct restrictions from Yred, unless he is foolish enough to read a scroll of Holy Word.

Yred has a fast piety decay, which suits GhAs, who already has a fast rot clock.

Yred lets GhAs eat the chunks and then raise the skeletons. This helps him axe snowball against crowds, building up a large chunk supply to heal himself. Yred's Drain Life ability saves GhAs when this risky tactic results in temporary overwhelm. Drain Life permits GhAs to bridge the gap until he can butcher all the new corpses or take a minute to eat the chunks he already has. The piety cost of Drain Life is small, making this an excellent synergy.

Leading from the front is dangerous and sometimes puts GhAs exposed to big guns. Injury Mirror piety cost scales with square root of damage taken, meaning that it's best to take one huge hit rather than many small ones. For example, ten 1HP hits cost 10 piety, and so does one 100HP hit. High Ghoul mHP from +1 Fighting and +10% mHP synergize with this weapon, as does chunk HP recovery. Ghoul can simply chow down while tanking a glass-cannon unique.

Enslave Soul allows GhAs to obtain weak imitation of Hep's Hexer ancestor, providing renewable MR-checks, which GhAs' low Intelligence does poorly.

The high food cost of Yred abilities is negligible for Ghoul, whose butcher bag overwfloweth.

In other words, GhAs is the ideal Yred worshipper.

Obviously in low-corpse Extended, Ghoul worships Kiku to secure a food source and better cast Necromancy.

Monsters

Beware the early Adder, which can still kill an unlucky GhAs despite rPois+++. Just because it shouldn't happen, doesn't mean it can't. Delay the encounter. Failing that, land a needle. Remember, GhAs starts in robes, and robes get wrecked.

Early Orc Wizards and Priests? Early Ogres? Same answer. Save your life, not your needles.

Usually the solution to a problem monster is to just shoot them with a needle. It's simple and effective.

Gear

Upgrade to Ring Mail ASAP. This will resolve most early problems. Ghoul is meant to wear decent armor, but the early needles are more important to have first.

Upgrade to a heavier base-damage weapon than the +2 dagger ASAP. Otherwise GhAs struggles in melee, which is quite dangerous, since he can't regen kite. For example, a +0 War Axe is significantly better, even 1v1.

An axe also suits GhAs hunger-pressured aggressive playstyle. Once he is a full Death Knight of Yred, wearing plate and shield, he will lead the charge for his fragile skeletal horde, tanking the hits which he can restore from chunks, while they do damage. Axe works well for this vanguard playstyle, scaling with multiple foes. GhAs Yred wants to advance, eating his kills to preserve his derived undead steamroll.

This is the obvious desirable endpoint. The common mistake is to try to get there directly, via starting as GhFi, which ruins his stats and leaves him one-dimensionally helpless vs early overpowering threats that counter melee.

Tactics

GhAs lacks enough Stealth to sneak in for stabs, and would kite back out poorly. However, his Throwing is great even at XL1 throwing Stones, so use that to pull, or a needle on a particularly tough foe. High Strength makes his hits devastating.

Ghoul must avoid getting too deep because he can't regen kite. Steps of separation are precious opportunities to fire unanswered needles to tilt the kite HP delta in your favor.

Snowball your chunks supply. Let auto-pickup decide when to eat chunks. Rest to full HP before advancing; in fact, retreat while resting to safety.

Although you may feel overpowered, don't open rune vaults of the floor you're currently clearing. It's easy enough to return to them later for a minor rot penalty. You can even defer them until switching to Kiku, if you like, although that's overkill. Kiku permits free movement unrestrained by hunger.

Yred's undead followers are stupid. Fortunately they're also slow, which gives you some room to set up favorable pulls. Blindly tabbing forward will get even you killed. Best practice is to set them to guard a cleared zone and recall them in when they're wanted.

Skilling

To Claw or not to Claw, that is the question

The big dilemma for Ghoul is Unarmed Combat versus melee weapons. The aptitude difference is +1 vs -1, or about 50%. Claws 1 is a rare advantage; the only other species with claws is Troll who starts with Claws 3, which are amazingly powerful.

However, Claws 3 base damage is 9, whereas Claws 1 base damage is only 5. Troll UC aptitude is only 1 less than Ghoul apt.

The result? Compare an XL1 TrFi to GhFi, both starting with claws, fighting an iguana:

• TrFi: 22 mHP, 3 vs 2.5 AED, .47 HP regen
• GhFi: 19 mHP, 1.4 vs 2.3 AED, 0 HP regen and eating restores about 3.6 HP per chunk

GhFi does about the same AED with a Rapier, Longsword, Flail, or Trident. War Axe performs significantly better at 1.6 AED, thanks to GhFi's high Strength. Base damage scales with Strength, which is why low base damage Claws 1 is such a poor choice for GhFi. Axe base damage is quite high due to low swing speed.

Thus Ghoul claws are not amazing. They are barely adequate compensation for Ghoul's weaknesses when starting as suboptimal backgrounds that lack a starting weapon. Ghoul is so stupid that his book starts would be nonviable without Claws.

However, Claws 1 means base damage is 5, dropping to 3 with gloves. This is pathetic. With the discovery of worthwhile gloves, Gh stops using claws. Remember, Gh cannot transmute or mutate at all. This eliminates the main utility of UC. Thus the versatility of melee weapons is far superior.

Think of the player Ghoul as an undead only slightly better than a naked human at unarmed combat. He's a Ghoul aristocrat, his rotten brain retaining most of his mental faculties. This intelligence comes at the price of a body far less optimized for combat than the barely-sentient howling packs of ghouls infesting the Crypt, whose truly impressive claws prohibit tool use.

Offense

At XL1, train Fighting, Short Blades and Throwing to primary.

After SL3, Fighting drops to secondary as the proportional benefit of +mHP drops, unless GhAs embraces multi-melee mastery.

Similarly, Short Blades performance pales compared to other weapon types, despite the enchanted dagger.

Axes is a good fit. A weapon can rise to primary if it's truly the primary melee focus, and skill is below mindelay. After mindelay it's secondary at best.

At XL1, GhAs's +2 dagger outperforms GhGl's claws vs an iguana by about 29%, so never train Unarmed Combat.

Skirmishing

Throwing is primary because no XL1 essential build uses Throwing better than GhAs. The needles are OP and delete extremely dangerous threats. Higher throwing makes them hit harder and therefore last longer, thanks to poison stacking. Also, GhAs' thrown Stones hit hard.

(SpAs would be able to poison kite more effectively. However, SpAs would be too fragile to win normal melee fights, forcing her to run out of needles prematurely.)

Throwing's priority declines after a Curare mulches, and as GhAs finds evocables. However, if he finds needle ammo and enchants his blowgun, it may remain primary, as his critical means of winning ranged battles. For example, Orc Wizards tend to self-buff over time, so it's important to needle them early. Being ineffectual at range can cause all sorts of problems.

An early Sling needn't be primary. GhAs relies on blowgun poison to overcome shy regen, but he's no Hunter, dependent on Slings for the majority of his damage.

Defenses

Training Dodging to SL1 won't increase EV, so defer it. It's secondary at best.

Armor is worth training for Chain Mail. Armor is secondary at best with heavy armor, until GhAs starts casting. Yred delays the need to cast for quite a while, favoring a tanky death-knight style. Shields are the same story.

Ghoul's Gallery

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TRIGGER WARNING: I don't give these lightly. Avoid #1 unless you can handle staring into the face of demonic horror. Death, where is thy sting?

Seriously. Don't open #1 unless you are ok watching hardcore undead horror movies. Not the fun kind, the pure evil kind. 99% of people shouldn't look. Included for verisimilitude only. You will have nightmares.

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